Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Noblesse Oblige - Kingdom Death Lion God modification

This was a salvage operation, and I don't think I would have done it if the Lion God weren't scheduled to be variously upgraded by new content, such as the Silver City which I'm anticipating even if the kickstarter has dragged so long "excited" is far too strong a word.
But, the point isn't to gripe about the KS being late (though I could certainly do so). I like the lion god theme well enough (very light spoilers ahead), and have always enjoyed the fallen hero and faded glory sensibilities.*

But I also think that the Lion God is one of the worst offenders in Kingdom Death's gratuitous genitals offender list. 

In addition to the regular old lion genitals, it has an extra penis coming out of its butt note the tail stub) and the giant whippy one coming out of what used to be its face which... IDK... got pulled back to reveal one more orifice? I think it's infantile and expresses a boring obsession with proving one's masculine comfort and sexual liberation by seeking attention and disproving that self-confidence.

(I suspect someone will gripe about my decisions here because I usually get a couple, so I'm going to head point any who object to my previous article on modifying miniatures.)

So, I started by making the tail its actual tail, and by giving it back its fur and ears. This is the version I painted, and it was okay, but I still wasn't really feeling it. I hadn't dealt with the secondary issue, of its weird Will Ferrell face growth staring off at nothing and its decidedly uninspired crown. Unlike the previous issues I had, these were technical rather than conceptual, so I had left them.

However, I kept not feeling satisfied with the Lion God when passing it in my case, so I eventually realized that it was time to further chop it up.

Having already made the ears, I decided to take it further and do a whole face, which turned into one of my favorite fast sculpts ever, I think taking a movie to get it right. The half-skull was honestly unnecessary but I thought it really sold the meat puppet/pseudo-undead sensibility.


At that point, the lion had no crown, which just wouldn't do. I decided that the hand parasites were a good excuse to hold a crown, which is chopped up from a fantasy banner head. With the much less conventional crown look, something like 5 years after I got the model, I finally feel like the Lion God has a supernatural regal sensibility, enough that he's been fun to fight and good enough that I'm looking forward to a setting built around the monster.

*That aesthetic is pretty much the main reason I've like GW's setting even when I've objected to most other stuff, is why Astral Claws are my main collection in the game, and why I find their post-primaris stuff just interminably boring.

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